Russia Invades Ukraine
In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, opening the largest land war in Europe since the Second World War. The attack escalated a conflict that had simmered since 2014, displaced millions of people, reshaped European security arrangements, and prompted one of the most extensive sanctions campaigns ever imposed on a major economy.
The roots of the war lie in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, after which Ukraine became independent. Relations with Russia grew strained as Ukraine moved toward closer ties with the European Union and, in the view of Moscow, the West. In 2014, after protests in Kyiv led President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country, Russia annexed Crimea, a move almost universally rejected by other states as a violation of international law. Russia also backed separatist forces in parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where fighting continued for eight years despite the Minsk agreements, which were meant to end it. In late 2021, Russia massed troops near Ukraine's borders while demanding guarantees that Ukraine would never join NATO and that the alliance would curtail its presence in Eastern Europe.
On 24 February 2022, Russian forces attacked from several directions, including from Belarus toward Kyiv, from the east, and from the south out of Crimea. President Vladimir Putin described the operation as a "special military operation" aimed at the "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine, claims widely rejected as unfounded. Many observers expected a rapid Russian victory, but Ukrainian forces, led politically by President Volodymyr Zelensky, resisted fiercely. Russian troops failed to take Kyiv and withdrew from northern Ukraine by the spring, leaving evidence of serious abuses against civilians in places such as Bucha. The fighting then concentrated in the east and south, becoming a grinding war of attrition.
The consequences were far-reaching. Millions of Ukrainians fled abroad, and many more were displaced within the country. Western governments, led by the United States and the European Union, imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia and supplied Ukraine with large quantities of weapons, training, and financial aid. NATO, which some had described as adrift only a few years earlier, showed considerable cohesion, and Finland and Sweden abandoned long-standing military nonalignment to seek membership; Finland joined in 2023 and Sweden in 2024. The war also disrupted global energy and grain markets, contributing to inflation and food-security concerns, and pushed Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.
The conflict's ultimate outcome remained uncertain, and its human toll is difficult to measure precisely, as casualty figures are contested and incomplete. Its significance, however, is already clear: it challenged the principle that borders should not be changed by force and set off a lasting realignment of European politics and defense.